Top Portland Metro Area Behavioral Health Nonprofit Leads the Way to Enhance the State of the Region’s Wellness

LifeWorks NW selects Enli Health Intelligence® to support its launch of team-based care that combines behavioral and primary healthcare delivery

PORTLAND, Ore., June 19, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The relationship between physical health and mental health reveals deep connections between the two, especially in the quest for overall individual well-being. To better examine data and measure outcomes toward strengthened care delivery, LifeWorks NW has developed a partnership with Enli Health Intelligence, the market leader in population health management technologyi.

The partnership is Enli’s inaugural expansion beyond primary health into the behavioral health arena. Developed in a real world environment by physicians at Providence Health & Services, Enli CareManager will be used at LifeWorks NW to evaluate clinical, behavioral, socioeconomic and financial data to identify and segment client populations according to health and financial risk. Insights from the data will be used by the LifeWorks NW wellness care team to drive continuous improvements in its delivery of both primary and behavioral healthcare.

Long in LifeWorks NW’s strategic plan, the catalyst for the alliance arose from the nonprofit’s selection as one of 14 statewide organizations to represent Oregon in the 2017-2019 federal Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHC) demonstration project. The project emphasizes integration of mental and physical health to improve individual outcomes.

“Ultimately, we want to lead the way in improving the well-being of people across our region,” said Mary Monnat, LifeWorks NW’s president/CEO. “As we implement workflows that are built on integrated and team-based care, we want to ensure that we can generate reliable and usable data to strengthen treatment models and quantify the value of the CCBHC approach.”

With approximately 23 outpatient and residential behavioral health clinics in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, the Lifeworks NW executive team recognized that a population health management approach would be a prerequisite to the evolution of care delivery. Now, with Enli technology, it is prepared to meet the conditions for participation and reimbursement as a CCBHC, which include data aggregation, risk stratification, treatment in accordance with evidenced-based guidelines and outcomes reporting.

“There has been a great opportunity for behavioral healthcare providers to enhance IT systems, allowing us to better pursue integrated care,” said Monnat. “In our alliance with Enli we can take advantage of its proven ability to identify gaps in care based on risk profiles, and then use that data to coordinate cost effective wellness plans that build patient cohorts and carve opportunities for ever greater collaborative care.”

Moving from primary care to behavioral healthcare is a natural extension of Enli’s expertise. “In our experience we know that behavioral health screenings and quality measures are vital to the success of our customers in ambulatory care, especially in Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), who also are reimbursed through a prospective payment system,” said Enli Chief Medical Officer Joseph Siemienczuk, M.D. “Working with Lifeworks NW we can gain first-hand insights into how CareManager can influence outcomes for mental health and addiction clients that can then be applied across the behavioral healthcare landscape.”

The Enli CareManager solution will be employed in LifeWorks NW’s four CCBHC clinics located in Beaverton, Gresham, Hillsboro and NE Portland (MLK Jr. Blvd.), when the CCBHC model fully launches by July 1, 2017.

About Lifeworks NorthwestLifeWorks NW provides a full range of mental health, addiction and prevention services for children and adults—from infants to seniors—across the Portland metro area. Since 1961, we have responded to the changing needs of the community by expanding our reach and services to currently support 21,000 people annually in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties. We employ more than 700 people, working in multi-service sites, residential programs and in schools and other community settings. For more information, go to www.lifeworksnw.org.

About Enli Enli Health Intelligence® is the market leader in population health management technology. Enli enables care teams to perform to their full potential by integrating healthcare data with evidence-based guidelines embedded in provider workflows across the population and at the point of care. For more information about Enli Health Intelligence and its population health management solutions, please visit Enli.net.